Vodafone-Essar has decided to demerge its tower business into a separate entity, Ortus, and sell it off to an independent tower company.
The company, which has around 7,000 telecom towers, has valued them at around $1.2 billion and has appointed Barclays Capital as its advisor. The likely bidders for the towers include independent tower companies like GTL Infrastructure, Srei Infra and American Tower Corporation.
The deal is expected to fetch around Rs 30 billion for Vodafone Essar. However, the company said there was no formal sale process. “We review options for these (7,000 tower) assets from time to time,” Vodafone said in a verbal statement.
The bulk of Vodafone?s telecom towers have already been hived off into Indus Towers, a separate company, which is a three-way venture between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar and Idea Cellular. Vodafone may also look at the possibility of merging its individually held towers with Indus Towers, according to reports.
